New answers tagged medieval
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No, kicking would not be effective.
Kicking are already easily defended against in normal humans. This is because the larger mass of your leg means that kicks have lower velocity. This problem can be alleviated somewhat with training, but it is still a problem. Now, take your hypothetical ogre. Due to having 15 times the mass of a normal human, his kicks ...
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You could make your lizardmen reptile-brained in the biological sense. That means they would have the following qualities:
Weak social inclinations, making it difficult for them to organize coherently.
Lowered inhibitions, making them prone to infighting, sudden hatreds and affections, and in other ways generally quite fickle.
Somewhat obsessive, single-...
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Humanities power comes, not from our large brains and tool use, but from our large social structures.
A single human is not particularly scary, a bear, couger or wolf can kill one without too much difficulty. But a thousand humans can kill just about anything out there (excluding a larger group of humans).
Make your lizard men extremely tribal. Similar to ...
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They evolved as a K-selected species
Meaning, their current reproductive capabilities are adapted for an environment that can barely support their numbers; they reproduce slowly.
Prior to the "Naruto-running zombies"(?), each of the three lizardfolk species was saturating their livable territory, and eventually adapted to a relatively low-density ...
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Like cane toads, lizard folk will try to mate with anything.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-10-lusty-cane-toads-latch-powerless-python-180971151/
But in their quest to reproduce, cane toads sometimes get a bit
overzealous. They have been known to try and mate with anything they
can catch: male toads, human hands and feet, other species ...
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if you are cold blooded, the sweatshirt won’t do any good. Because you’re not generating any body heat. You need an external heat source. This is going to be a major disadvantage against anyone not cold blooded.
As someone else mentioned, Keeping lizards outside of a tropical climate is very challenging.
Insulation is not enough: a woolly coat might work ...
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One thing that all reptiles, being exothermic, have problems with is temperature. Too little and they cannot move, and if there is too much they roast. A viable defense against the lizard people would be to set up large space-heaters around a defensible position, which would really mess with any that come close.
In addition, even if the heat is just right, ...
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Breathing is a thing for reptiles.
Some reptiles must hold their breath during intense running. It puts a harsh limit on how far they can run.
Most reptiles lack a secondary palate meaning they must hold their breath while swallowing. Though crocodiles have one. Many snakes that swallow their prey whole must hold their breath for the entire process. Some ...
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Wax in your ears and a pointy stick
Since you say it's docile, all they have to do is gently encourage it to a suitable location while not upsetting it too much. Trying to transport a 100ton unconscious or dead dragon is going to be an exercise in logistics and engineering that they're probably not up to. Getting it to walk there will be much simpler.
Not ...
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Rather than try to actively capture it, and since the dragon seems fairly tame if left unprovoked, it seems the best option would be to put it to sleep.
You could easily do that by feeding the dragon with alcohol or some sleep-potion injected food, lots and lots of it. The logistics of this would be complicated but still far cheaper than constructing a ...
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Track it down to its lair and use poison gas.
From what you've said, it seems that this dragon is hiding underground, or in some location in can easily escape from, but can't be spotted, which suggests a cave system. The first step is to track him, which is actually pretty easy.
If he's flying, he can be seen. If he isn't, it's a dragon. It'll be draggin' ...
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Bribes
Or, more specifically, negotiation.
To summarize, we have a creature that read Sun Tzu's The Art of War
This means the dragon in question has some a high degree of sentience, and is well-read as well. Any attempts to capture a dragon and keep it captured will probably consume vast amounts of resources. If we wanted to keep it alive and tame it as ...
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This is a pretty interesting problem to solve tbh. A few ways to kill/immobilize/stop this dragon:
Nets and ropes: Watch this Sun Tzu-reading diabolical, magical, genius get taken out by humanity's 4th/5th invention. Ideally instead of properly trying to fight/kill it (you've shown how pointless that is) you can just find a way to attach ropes to this ...
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Poison.
/This one steers clear of larger units, attacking defenseless supply lines and snatching the nibbles./
A tracker of this dragon will understand what it favors as "nibbles". Maybe white horses. Maybe virgins. Maybe mustard pork jerky. The tracker obtains said nibbles and then arranges caravans thru dragon territory which contain favored nibbles. ...
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You could potentially build a hot air balloon with medieval level tech. This would only get you to a certain height above your pseudoplanet since it does require gravity to provide lift. After you reach a height where gravity is negligible you could use wind currents or propellers similar to a reverse windmill. The craft will probably be very slow but since ...
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Major nitpick: you've got a habitat that's 6000km across, presumably with a conventionally earth-density-and-pressure-and mix atmosphere in it. From the centre ofthe habitat, you're looking through 3000km of air. On earth at standard temperature and pressure, a square metre of surface has about 10.3 tonnes of air pressing down on it. A cuboid of air 3000km ...
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Chinese repeating crossbow
I would like to raise what was already mentioned in passing by Alberto Yagos in a comment into a proper answer and build on it.
First a little bit about crossbows in general:
The crossbow was a scary weapon when it first appeared in Europe. It takes significantly less training to make a simple peasant adept at the weapon ...
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We really need more information concerning the nature of your world, I fear that air resistance would destroy your world in short order. But I will attempt an answer.
Given the situation I would assume that your “medieval” is not going to be an exact mirror image of classic Earth medieval since they will be flying between worlds, but it just means primitive ...
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4 arrows to the one means you just brought an automatic weapon to a single shot fight, yes in war this is absolutely a game changer. the US civil war used single shot rifles when 6guns and chain guns were available. then Germany armed all there troops with sub and machine guns and nearly conquered the old world. from a war perspective this is absolutely a ...
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Anything in limited, stable supply
Things or materials that cannot [easily] be created and don't easily break down have a reasonably stable value because if everything suddenly became cheaper, everyone would start buying more stuff and vendors would just raise their prices again. If a few people started creating more currency and spending it, it would ...
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To stick with the D&D theme, how about mithril? The mithril coins could be quite small and light. All the other coin metals have intrinsic values, so your new intermediate coin should too. Sure, your players may start hoarding the new coins in hopes of melting them down into a new piece of armor. That’s okay. Just fiddle around with the coin’s size and ...
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The OP refers to D&D... and it is obvious to me that the OP is familiar with some version from 3e onwards, since 2e and earlier contained exactly the concept that this question seeks, namely that of a currency of intermediate value between Gold and Silver: Electrum, a natural or artificial alloy of gold and silver.
In D&D 2e, an Electrum piece (ep) ...
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Some inspiration...
After WW2, people in germany bought 'lucky strike' cigarettes with their silver, because they could trade cigarettes more easily against food.
Cigarettes were the best currency at the time, because they were all the same, came in packs, were inflating naturally, people were already adicted and you couldn't produce them yourself.
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Tin
A large tin coin would be more valuable than a small silver coin. Tin is very valuable for making bronze and fairly rare. So it may be too valuable for use in coins.
Brass
Brass did not really exist in the ancient world but in fantasy world you could have brass, and brass is valuable and makes good coins.
Zinc
Zinc only shows up late in the medieval ...
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Traditional Japanese currency was rice.
It stores well, it’s uniform size, and it’s directly proportional to the actual wealth: amount of land you hold and the number of people you can sustain.
Most farmers grew rice not to eat but to pay taxes. Instead they ate cheaper grains like millet. Eating rice was like eating money. Something for the rich to do.
...
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So you want a good way to divide a silver coin into small amounts ? divide the coin itself.
This idea is not mine, but is an historical exemple : Hacksilver.
Currency usually come from a high authority (the state, the church, the banks...), and while it can be made out of valuable metals, the value don't really come from the material itself, but from the ...
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What currency is and how it is different from other tradeable goods
Currency is a form of money. Money in the form of currency is represented by small lightweight standardized and durable pieces having uniform value. The advantage of using money in the form of currency is that the pieces are:
Uniform.
The uniformity of currency pieces allows for the value ...
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Salt
It is commonly believed the Roman soldiers were paid in salt, although this belief has met some recent challenges. Per the same second link, quoting Marcus Livius in 204 BC, the typical price of a pound of salt is $1 \over 6$ pieces of copper. Through the middle ages, a single piece of copper was equal to roughly a day's wages for most unskilled and ...
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In medieval times, not all places used minted coins for all transactions. Some still used trade and taxation in kind. This is to say barter and otherwise offering goods and products. So, somebody could go to the market and use grain or livestock to trade for other items, or products of these, such as bread or milk.
The same might be acceptable as taxation, ...
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Pearls
In the real world, all but the smallest pearls are fairly expensive. A strand of Akoya ('standard') pearls can cost from USD 300 to more than USD 10,000, while other varieties may be more or less valuable.
Obviously, pearls come in different sizes, but if pearls are used as currency, scales can be used to determine value - which needs not be linear ...
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Glowstones.
The problem with gems is that they are not intrinsically useful. But a gem that emitted light would definitely be useful in a world otherwise lit only by fire. Cool, smokeless, permanent light is worth a lot. You could make these gems small, so you would need a fair number of them to equal a candle. But they are durable as well as useful, so ...
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If you look back at history and to why we started using gold, silver and other valuables as currency, is because they were rare, hard to get and therefore coveted.
In general, the reason we use metals instead of gemstones as currency is because we can melt the metals down and cast them into a consistent shape, so we know the value is also consistent. So, ...
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Modern coins and paper bills are a promise that they can be exchanged for something of value. The fancy material and engraving prevent people from simply creating more of these promises.
Ancient coins are items of value themselves. They are stamped to reassure the users that the shape has not been "shaved" and that the material is not diluted.
Gold and ...
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A high wall with a field of pointed stakes on the other side should be enough to deal with them, as they are too dumb to spot the trap.
Lured into leaping over the wall and impaling themselves (and then being bombarded with stones and arrows) , they all die with zero casualties.
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It was due to a phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation
Cherenkov radiation occurs when a particle travels faster than the speed of light in a given medium. Given air's low density and low refractive index, a particle needs to be travelling at about 0.9997c in order to produce the glow you want. Alpha particles won't travel far enough through air to give ...
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Castles are pretty much useless if they can just jump over the walls, so you will have to fight them on an open field, it really depends on how you gonna get a large enough force to fight them.
Weapons like longbows, polearms and early versions of muscets might be the weapons you wanna go for to stay away from them as far as possible, although polearms will ...
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Rule #1: Lose the armor.
Medieval armor had enough trouble against Rennaisance-era musket balls - and arguably, the proliferation of even primitive firearms was the last nail in the coffin for the era of plate-armored knights.
Against modern rifles with AP rounds, a suit of medieval armor might as well be a large mobile coffin or a ball-and-chain around ...
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For a knight with a sword to be effective, he has to get within melee range in the face of direct gunfire and explosives. Small arms fire may be survivable with very heavy armor or perhaps even a heavy pavise-shield to hide behind, but a grenade is going to wreck his day.
Armor that can withstand assault rifles, heavy machine guns, and grenades is not ...
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George Washington's army could slaughter your knights in a stand-up fight.
Every generation of military tech is designed to defeat the last few generations. So you have to avoid stand-up fights.
I think our best precedent is the Scots wars against the English, where a variery of asymmetrical methods were used, sich as preparing the battlefield or ...
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I've noticed the question was not about withstanding a modern army, but just soldiers.
So the answer would be tactics: pick the place and the time - wait for a sandstorm, then attack. All the long-range advantage of riflemen and snipers will gone due to bad visibility conditions. Infrared recon and satellite imaging will be useless. And modern fire-weapons ...
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Okay, first an important question: Are we talking about a medieval army somehow transported into present day? Or a modern army somehow transported back into medieval times? Because it makes a huge difference. If it's the latter, many of the advantages that modern armies have would be severely handicapped. For example:
Lack of vehicles and air support - ...
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Space Shields
In the game Knigths of the Old Republic the justification to have people running around
with swords and maces while flying spaceships, was that a personal shield agains lasers and high velocity slugs was at a point that a group of well trained swordsmands could contest against a great number of soldiers for a position, without a way for them ...
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A medieval knight and a modern soldier are surprisingly equally matched.
The knight is a professional soldier, well trained, and willing to kill to achieve his goals.
The soldier is a normal guy, given a gun and told to guard this area or something. He is not prepared to kill at the drop of a hat and unlikely to actually fire for effect before the knight, ...
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OK, This is the historical answer. This was probably the biggest military upset of the 20th century: Battle of Dien Bien Phu The TLDR version is that the French adopted a "hedgehog" strategy; they camped defensively and expected to rout the Viet Cong [I will call them that for now]. It does show that a somewhat greater force in number [the VieT cONG] can win ...
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Humans have a long and (in retrospect) not entirely proud history of eradicating bigger, badder, faster and hungrier predators, and there are a huge range of techniques that can be used.
The simplest thing that springs to mind is bait and poison. You'll need quite a lot of poison to kill something that big, but with a bit of practical research it can ...
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If your dragons can fly while being this big, then (realistic) physics dictate that their bones must be extremely thin and fragile for them to be able to take flight in the first place. Just look at birds' bone structure for reference.
With that in mind, dragons could simply have their bones crushed by catapult or mangonel fire, or even have their legs, ...
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Maybe consider adding magic into your world since you have dragon anyway?
You could have dragon hunting regiments (mercenaries maybe ?), equip with harpoon launchers with chains attached. A small group of magicians will transmit electric shock once the harpoon penetrated the scales.
You can add some backstory about the leader of the mercenary band hated ...
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Unless you somehow are aware of the existence of lightning rods (which were invented in the 18th century in our world), set up a trap in a stormy day and pray for a well-timed thunderbolt... No, I don't think you can.
In the medieval time there was no way to store or generate sufficient amounts of electricity.
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With the sort of setting you have in mind, there's no chemical power source strong enough to create a jolt that would take down a large animal. That said, nets work just as well against fliers, and siege weaponry could fling nets. The real difficulty is luring the dragon into the path of the net, but there's always some likely lad who'll ride out for that ...
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How do a you make a knight with armour and a sword formidable against
a modern-day soldier with gear and a gun.
Better knight armor was made in layers and was shaped to deflect blows where it could not simple absorb them. Build it to deflect rounds, like it was done to tanks. Of course that means being hit at a give location from certain angles is fatal ...
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